Summer's (unofficially) over, Hermine aint here, and it is time to get back to school.

1. Blockchain Hype

The Bloomberg article Maybe Blockchain Really Does Have Magical Powers produced a fair bit of chatter in the office this week. Some couldn't get past the snark, but your author respects good snark when he see it. The article calls into question the hyperbole of the WEF report released this summer and also highlights our recent Corda whitepaper:

What's new is that each transaction comes with attached code (a “smart contract”) containing standardized rules about how to decide whether it is valid. The parties download and independently run the code to verify the transaction. This is cheaper and faster than traditional reconciliation, because it eliminates the need for a bunch of back-office employees at each separate institution to reconcile transactions using their own unique sets of rules and data fields.

[SNIP] The only thing previously stopping the standardization of reconciliation processes was the unwillingness of financial institutions to collaborate. Financial institutions spend $65-80 billion on back office reconciliation every year. The employees working in back offices probably offered lots of excellent reasons why their roles couldn’t simply be standardized away.

[SNIP] Standardization of rules and data fields is a good idea that could save billions of dollars in back-office reconciliation costs. Maybe one of the biggest effects of all the blockchain hype will be getting a bunch of security-conscious egoists to come to an agreement that benefits them all. That would truly be magical.

It’s strange to hear chief executives pour cold water on technologies that are at the heart of their own companies. Yet that’s what Adam Ludwin, who is the CEO of blockchain company Chain, did when I met with him this month. The hype over blockchain—a new form of record keeping that relies on a shared digital ledger—is causing people to lose sight over what the technology is meant to do, according to Ludwin. “Blockchain is a database for money,” he said. “I don’t understand why people talk about it in terms of health records and home deeds and voting systems.”

Couple these articles with the recent Gartner Hype Cycle warning, and it shows how important delivery becomes as we head toward 2017.

2. Catching Up

The project is designed to cut costs, speed up settlement time and reduce credit risk in the market for moving money between banks both domestically and across borders. It could represent a challenge to the Swift interbank payment system, the main messaging system used by banks to handle large money transfers. Swift has recognised the potential threat and has itself been examining blockchain’s potential.

Swift — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — warned its members that while there had been fewer publicly reported cases of banks being attacked, hackers were still on the hunt for weaknesses in their security systems. “We have seen new cases of input fraud since we last wrote to update you on these issues,” Swift said in its letter. “The attackers have followed a broadly similar modus operandi, but have specifically tailored every attack to each individual target.”

IBM is reorganizing its internal blockchain team into a business unit that encompasses its artificial intelligence and cloud computing efforts, called 'Industry Platforms.' In addition to the work on blockchain tech, the business unit will lead IBM's efforts to bridge its financial services work with its Watson artificial intelligence initiative.